Subject Heading List

A Subject Heading List is a Controlled Vocabulary of Subject Headings that is used in Document Subject Heading Indexing Task.

• AKA: Subject Heading Scheme.
• Context:
  • It can be used by a Document Subject Heading Indexing System.
• Example(s):
  • MeSH.
  • Library of Congress Subject Heading List.
• See: Taxonomy.

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References

2009

• (Ménard, 2009) ⇒ Elaine Ménard. (2009). “Ordinary Image Retrieval in a multilingual context: a comparison of two indexing vocabularies.” In: Proceedings of ISKO UK 2009 Conference.
  • A subject heading list is “a controlled vocabulary of terms in natural language that are designed for both pre-coordination and post-coordination” (Chu, 2005). Among the popular general subject heading lists, we have the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the Repertoire d’autorité-matière encyclopédique et alphabétique unifié (RAMEAU), the Canadian Subject Headings (CSH) and the Répertoire de Vedettes-Matière de l’Université Laval (RVM). Although there are many lists presently available, subject headings lists are not extensively used for image indexing (Jörgensen, 2003).

2008

• (Dextre Clarke et al., 2008) ⇒ Stella Dextre Clarke, Alan Gilchrist, Ron Davies and Leonard Will. (2008). “Glossary of Terms Relating to Thesauri and Other Forms of Structured Vocabulary for Information Retrieval." Willpower Information
  • subject heading list
    • (use subject heading scheme)
  • subject heading scheme
    • (use for subject heading list)
    • controlled vocabulary comprising single terms available for subject indexing, plus rules for combining the single terms in strings
    • The principles for constructing subject heading lists differ from the principles of thesaurus construction. Subject heading lists may have provision for the construction of pre-coordinated indexing strings including headings and one or more levels of subheading.

2003

• Cataloging Glossary http://gondolin.rutgers.edu/MIC/text/how/catalog_glossary.htm
  • A controlled vocabulary (established list of preferred terms, usually with cross references), generally of topical subjects, which can be added to a descriptive record to enable search and retrieval by subject.

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